are and to the whole
art of poetry is to be found in his letter to Dennis, dated 3 March,
1693/4. Shakespeare, he said, had genius, which is "alone a greater
Virtue ... than all the other Qualifications put together." He admitted
that all the faults pointed out by Rymer are real enough, but he added a
question that removed the discussion from theory to immediate
experience: "Yet who will read Mr. Rym[er] or not read Shakespear?" When
Dryden died in 1700, the age of Jonson had passed and the age of
Shakespeare was about to begin.

The Shakespeare of Rowe's _Account_ is in most essentials the
Shakespeare of Restoration criticism, minus the consideration of his
faults. As Nichol Smith has observed, Dryden and Rymer were continually
in Rowe's mind as he wrote. It is likely that Smith is correct in
suspecting in the _Account_ echoes of Dryden's conversation as well as
of his published writings;[10] and the respect in which Rymer was then
held is evident in Rowe's desire not to enter into controversy with that
redoubtable critic and in his inability to refrain from doing so.

If one reads the _Account_ in Pope's neat and tidy revision and then as
Rowe published it, one is impressed with its Restoration quality. It
seems almost deliberately modelled on Dryden's prefaces, for it is
loosely organized, discursive, intimate, and it even has something of
Dryden's contagious enthusiasm. Rowe presents to his reader the
Restoration Shakespeare: the original genius, the antithesis of Jonson,
the exception to the rule and the instance that diminishes the
importance of the rules. Shakespeare "lived under a kind of mere light
of nature," and knowing nothing of the rules should not be judged by
them. Admitting the poor plot structure and the neglect of the unities,
except in an occasional play, Rowe concentrates on Shakespeare's
virtues: his images, "so lively, that the thing he would represent
stands full before you, and you possess every part of it;" his command
over the passions, especially terror; his magic; his characters and
their "manners."

Bentley has demonstrated statistically that the Restoration had little
appreciation of the romantic comedies. And yet Rowe, so thoroughly
saturated with Restoration criticism, lists character after character
from these plays as instances of Shakespeare's ability to depict the
manners. Have we perhaps here a response to Shakespeare read as opposed
to Shakespeare seen? Certainly the romantic co